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THE

QUARTERLY,

&c. &c.

JUNE, 1825.

ROYAL FAMILY OF FRANCE.

I.-Memoirs of the Private Life of MARIE ANTOINETTE, Queen of France and Navarre, &c. &c. by MADAME CAMPAN, first Lady of the Bed chamber to the Queen. 8vo. 2 vols. p. p. 447 and 402.

II.-Royal Memoirs of the French Revolution, &c. Lond. 1823. 8vo. 362.

THE contents of these works, in some measure illustrate each other; and throw light upon the events, that excited so much interest at the beginning of the career of the present generation. We shall say nothing of the second article in the above titles, until we shall have finished our business with the first---with which, probably, by this time many of our readers may be more or less acquainted.

We should commence our account perhaps advantageously, were we to call up some recollections, as to the state of public opinion regarding the exalted person whose private life, and (therefore it should be allowable to infer,) whose real character is professedly laid open. But the memoirs go much further back than the period, at which the Queen of France became an object of concern or of attention to those, who were neither of the court, nor of the nation, in which she held her conspicuous sway. They commence with the latter years of Louis XV.

F

Of this monarch, and of those, whose names are floating down the stream of history in company with his, we have some curious stories, most of which are neither new, nor perhaps told in a very novel manner, but some are both; and we shall cull a few, as we pass, without affecting to assign to any of them either illustrations or applications, beyond what are given in the work nor can we possibly attempt to abridge the memoirs generally---much less to pretend that we select all, or select merely the most interesting or important. In this our own fancy or discretion must be our guide ---under the desire of aiming at what will most likely, and most generally please.

Louis XV. had four daughters---tó whom soon after the death of his Queen, Mademoiselle Genet (our authoress) was, at the age of 15, appointed reader. This was the commencement of Madame Campan's own history, and thus was she plunged into the penetralia of the court of Versailles---over which reigned a monarch as unfit to adorn the circle, as he was unworthy to rule the nation.

"He thought of nothing but the pleasures of the chace; and the courtiers seriously remarked on days that the king did not hunt--the king does nothing to-day."

Since the death of Pampadour he yet had no avowed mistress; managed his disgraceful expences himself; visited his daughters in a hurried manner in the morning, with coffee in his hand, that he had himself made; set off for the chace; and held a formal debotier in the evening. He called his daughters by the name of Sow, Rag, Scrap, and Stuff-these princely epithets being supposed, by his royal imagination, to be characteristic of the ladies, on whom they were bestowed.

Louis XV. could decapitate an egg shell at one blow of his fork, with such dexterity, that he always had eggs for dinner, when that meal was to be publicly eaten, and sent away the Parisian cockneys on Sundays, full of admiration at his powers of demolition.

Into the history of the Princesses it is impossible to enter. For the sake of economy they were educated in a provincial convent, analogous, we presume, to a bad country boarding school in England, where they seem to have learnt nothing, if we except one, who having an insatiable desire for learning (gluttony not taste) was "taught to play upon all instruments, from the horn to the jew's harp!" and even this education was not bestowed, till they had returned to court.*

One of them took the veil, in the convent of the Carmelites at St. Denis; and Mad. Campan tells us, that Louis XVI. informed her of the princess's death in the following terms,

"My aunt Louise, your old mistress, is just dead at St. Denis. I "have this moment received intelligence of it. Her piety and resigna❝tion were admirable, and yet the delirium of my good aunt recalled to "her recoilection, that she was a Princess, for her last words were, to "Paradise, quick, quick, full speed. No doubt she thought she was K again giving orders to her groom."

Of another of these royal damsels we have the following trait.

“Mad. Vistorie was not indifferent to good living, but she had the "most religious scruples about dishes, which it was allowable for her to "eat of at penitential times. I saw her one day exceedingly tormented "by her doubts about a water-fowl, which was often served up to her "during lent. The question to be irrevocably determined was whether "it was fish or flesh. She consulted a Bishop, who happened to be of "the party: the prelate immediately assumed a decided tone of voice,

and the grave attitude of a judge in the highest court of appeal. He "answered the princess, that it had been resolved, that in a similar case "of doubt, after dressing the bird, it should be pricked over a very "cold silver dish, that if the gravy of the animal congealed within a quarter of an hour, the creature was to be accounted flesh; but if the gravy "remained in an oily state, it might be eaten at all times without scru"ple."

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* Madame Campan here relates a striking anecdote in a note, concerning one of the sisters of the convent, promoted by the interest of the royal pupils. Mad. de Soulanges was her name, and she was an exception to the rest of the community. "This excellent woman" says our author, "fell a victim to the revolutionary madness. She and her 66 numerous sisters were led to the scaffold on the same day. While "leaving the prison, they all chaunted the Veni Creator on the fatal car. When arrived at the place of execution they did not interrupt "their strains. One head fell, and ceased to join its voice at the celestial chorus, but the strain continued. The abbess suffered last; and her single voice, with increased tone, still raised the devout * versicle. It ceased at once, it was the silence of death!"

66

Query as to the waggery of the Bishop? The test favoured the palate of the princess, and her soul was delivered from thraldom.

We must make short work with what intervenes, prior to the entry of Marie Antoinette upon the stage. The Duc de Choiseul, the minister, had his enemies; and these were anxious for his overthrow, as a matter of course between the ins and outs of better governed countries than la belle France was, in those days, at least. They provided the old knocked-up monarch with a mistress, who was not likely to stick at means to do what would be required of her. All the world knows, that this woman was Du Barry, and also what she was. The Duc d'Arguillon, who set her up, attained the object of removing Choiseul, about the time that the marriage between the heir apparent and the daughter of Maria Theresa was accomplished, by the exertions of this minister.

The education of Marie Antoinette appears to have been very unsuitable to the station she was destined to occupy. Neglected by the Empress, and confided to the care of those, whose object seems to have been to please, and not to instruct their pupils, she in fact knew nothing. An exception is made in favour of Italian, but we suspect this is more a compliment to her illustrious instructor, Metastasio, than any proof of her attainments even in that seductive. language. Her ignorance was soon found out at the court of France, and the inference was drawn that she was deficient in sense. It is probable (until austere experience forced some of this upon her at a latter period) that this charge was not so unfounded, as Mad. Campan herself may have supposed. In one thing she was sadly mistaken, and that was in the contempt she took no pains to conceal for the etiquette of the French court, which was not confined to public occasions, but pervaded every part of the royal economy, where, at least, it was possible for a witness, however insignificant, to be present. To this perhaps her unpopula

rity was originally owing, or at least it gave early occasion for the formation of enemies, who had the powèr to make her unhappy and to injure her.

Through the greater part of her life, too, she seems to have been the pupil of a man, who himself is represented as not possessed of a superabundance of wisdom, though cunning enough to preserve his authority over the Queen. This was the Abbe de Vermond, who was sent to Vienna to instruct her in French, where he acquired a firm, and lasting ascendancy over her.

To France she at length came; and became Queen in May, 1774. The death scene of Louis XV. was almost a repetition of that recorded of our Third Edward.

As soon

The monarque died of the small pox. as he knew the nature of his disorder he sent away Madame du Barry; but her friends disputed with the opposite party, even at the foot of the bed; on which the departing King was extended. He had religious duties to perform, which it was the interest of one set to delay, while the other was anxious to hasten them.

"The whole court went to the castle; the bull's eye was filled with courtiers, and the whole palace with the inquisitive. The Dauphin_had settled, that he would leave it with the royal family, the moment the King should breathe his last sigh. But, upon such an occasion, decency forbade, that positive orders for departure should be passed from mouth to mouth. The keepers of the stables therefore agreed with the people, who were in the King's room, that the latter should place a lighted taper near a window, and that at the instant of the King's decease, one of them should extinguish it. The taper was extinguished. On this signal the body-guards, pages and equerries mounted on horseback, and all was ready for setting off. The Dauphin was with the Dauphiness They were expecting together the intelligence of the death of Louis XV. A dreadful noise, absolutely like thunder, was heard in the outer apart ment: it was the crowd of courtiers who were deserting the dead sovereign's antichamber, to come and bow to the new power of Louis XVI. &c."

To give any connected view of the progress of affairs is not possible for us. We must therefore select here and there, in a desultory manner, what most strikingly pertains to the subject of this work. For several years after the marriage of the King and Queen,

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